Google is taking a completely different approach from everyone else with its self-driving cars

Google's self-driving cars are already in a few cities.Google
Just about every automaker these days is working on self-driving car technology. But no company is quite ready to remove the human driver completely from the equation.

But Google has opted to take a different route with its self-driving cars. The tech giant has focused its efforts on creating fully autonomous vehicles, where no human is needed to intervene at any point during a trip from point A to point B.

In the industry, this is called "Level 4" autonomy. Other car makers and tech companies are working on this technology as well, but unlike Google these companies are betting humans will gradually hand over driving capabilities instead of completely entrusting their vehicle to do all the work.

Google admitted recently that it too had once at least entertained the idea of rolling out semi-autonomous safety features in phases, but then made a startling discovery that convinced them to forge ahead with completely autonomous vehicles.

In its monthly Self-Driving Car Project report, the company said that it had some employees test its autonomous vehicles while driving on the highway. The employees, who were not part of the self-driving car team, were given specific instructions to only use the technology on the freeway and to pay attention 100% of the time, as the technology was still very much in its early stages.

What they found was somewhat troubling.

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While all volunteers said the system helped make their commute less tiring, some of the volunteers became so reliant on the technology they started to not pay attention to their driving situation, possibly putting them in a dangerous scenario. One volunteer even turned completely around to search his backpack to find a charger for his phone while traveling 65 miles per hour down the freeway.

Tesla's Autopilot feature still gives the driver most of the control.
Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider
"We saw human nature at work: people trust technology very quickly once they see it works. As a result, it's difficult for them to dip in and out of the task of driving when they are encouraged to switch off and relax," the company said in its report.

According to a study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, it can take drivers five to eight seconds to regain control of a semi-autonomous system. While that may not seem like a lot of time in most situations, those seconds can mean the difference between life and death while driving. So Google ultimately decided it would focus its efforts on completely autonomous cars instead of a driving assistance systems that are only in control part of the time.

"In the end, our tests led us to our decision to develop vehicles that could drive themselves from point A to B, with no human intervention. (We were also persuaded by the opportunity to help everyone get around, not just people who can drive.)," the company stated in its report.

"Everyone thinks getting a car to drive itself is hard. It is. But we suspect it's probably just as hard to get people to pay attention when they're bored or tired and the technology is saying "don't worry, I've got this...for now."